Sour ruling for LimeWire as court says to turn off P2P functionality

A federal judge has issued an injunction against LimeWire, forcing it to …

LimeWire's days as a major player on the P2P scene appear to be over. Judge Kimba Wood has issued an injunction forcing LimeWire to disable "the searching, downloading, uploading, file trading and/or file distribution functionality, and/or all functionality" of its software.

After years of litigation—the RIAA first sued LimeWire in 2006—Judge Wood ruled in the RIAA's favor this past May. In granting the RIAA's motion for summary judgment, she found that LimeWire was liable for inducing copyright infringement, despite asking users to affirm that they were not using the software for that purpose. The company didn't help its case, as it made little to no effort to police infringement by its users via fingerprinting or content-filtering.

LimeWire had thoughts of going straight in August 2007, and planned to launch its own music store selling 256Kbps DRM-free tracks. Unsurprisingly, the labels weren't willing to offer their wares on a service also known for warez.

The P2P stalwart is still holding out hope of transforming into a legitimate destination for music, though. "While this is not our ideal path, we hope to work with the music industry in moving forward," a LimeWire spokesperson told Ars. "We look forward to embracing necessary changes and collaborating with the entire music industry in the future." The spokesperson also noted that the company isn't "shutting down," but it will be using its "best efforts" to stop supporting and distributing P2P software and to ramp up filtering.

LimeWire now faces a January trial for damages, and the RIAA is looking forward to compensation for the "billions" of infringements that took place. "The court has now signed an injunction that will start to unwind the massive piracy machine that LimeWire and Gorton used to enrich themselves immensely," an RIAA spokesperson told Ars. "In January, the court will conduct a trial to determine the appropriate level of damages necessary to compensate the record companies for the billions and billions of illegal downloads that occurred through the LimeWire system."

The injunction marks another victory in the RIAA's campaign against file-sharing. As recently as two-and-a-half years ago, LimeWire was the most popular P2P app out there, and it's still widely used. Disabling the functionality that file-sharers find useful will no doubt cause usage to bottom out, and some LimeWire users are likely to "go straight." But there are numerous other places for the discerning pirate to find illicit content, including BitTorrent, private hubs, and Usenet. Big Content's never-ending game of Whac-A-Mole continues.

Eric Bangeman
Eric has been using personal computers since 1980 and writing about them at Ars Technica since 2003, where he currently serves as Managing Editor. Twitter@ericbangeman